Spry Health Launches New Service, Loop Signal, to Assist in Surge of COVID-19 Cases by Reducing Avoidable Hospital Visits and Improving Patient Monitoring at Home
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Spry Health, a leader in health management technologies and remote patient monitoring, today announced the launch of Loop Signal, a new clinician-led monitoring service utilizing the company’s proprietary FDA-cleared (Class II) solution, the Loop System, to reduce avoidable hospital visits and to improve at home monitoring of patients confirmed, suspected, or at risk for COVID-19. The service is available immediately to healthcare provider and payer organizations across the United States.
Through its wrist-worn wearable, the Loop System remotely tracks heart rate, pulse-oximetry (SpO2), and respiratory rate, ensuring that care teams can monitor the vitals deemed critical to assess COVID-19 severity, according to the recent World Health Organization guidance.1 Spry Health has demonstrated the efficacy of the Loop System through extensive clinical validation studies with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). It was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April 2019 as a tool for clinicians to remotely monitor their patients with chronic diseases, allowing them to detect early signs of deterioration. This simple-to-use wearable does not require any input or data from patients, and does not require a smartphone or app. The Loop System’s clinical dashboard aggregates data to easily identify patients at risk and prioritize care.
“After talking to dozens of healthcare leaders over the past few weeks, it is clear many organizations are nearing their maximum capacity due to the large influx of patients showing up to emergency departments, often without meeting the necessary criteria for testing set by the CDC,” said Pierre-Jean “PJ” Cobut, co-founder and CEO of Spry Health. “We want to help alleviate the daily stress these providers and organizations are facing, as well as provide peace of mind to patients and their families. Clinicians can focus on the patients that need critical care, while we help monitor high-risk populations and intervene in advance of an emergency when early signs of deterioration are detected. The last thing we need now is to continue to flood the ED with avoidable visits, and possibly increase exposure to COVID-19, when care can be delivered remotely in the patient’s home.”
Loop Signal will enable physicians and health systems to quickly implement a full-service at-home patient monitoring program for individuals who are confirmed, suspected, or at risk for COVID-19, especially for those particularly at risk because of age or comorbidities. Providers will be able to prescribe the Loop System to patients and enroll them into the monitoring program either remotely, at point of care, or upon ED discharge. Patients showing signs of deterioration are contacted by telephone, treated remotely when possible to avoid unneeded exposure, or triaged to the appropriate level of care in coordination with their local care team. This full-service program is designed to provide immediate relief for the current surge of patient volumes, allowing providers to offer at-home monitoring and optimize valuable internal clinical resources for patients needing immediate or critical care support.
Steven Steinhubl, M.D., Director of Digital Medicine at Scripps Research Translational Science Institute, commented on the potential of wearable devices like the Loop System to address the current pandemic. “Implementing a remote patient monitoring program allows us to extend our resources out into the community and directly to the individual,” said Dr. Steinhubl. “Embracing remote, continuous monitoring can help us more safely and effectively care for everyone.”
“For the past five years we have been working with some of the top respiratory specialists and data scientists to develop the technology we now have, which is best-in-class at measuring respiratory metrics and providing insight into the progression of diseases.” said Elad Ferber, co-founder and CTO of Spry Health. “Though our Loop System has primarily been used for chronic conditions like COPD, a serious lung disease, we quickly realized the impact our technology and remote monitoring services could have in addressing the greatest crisis our healthcare system has faced.”
Company to Host Live Webinar on March 26th at 9 a.m. Pacific Time
To support provider organizations to learn more about Loop Signal and how to implement remote patient monitoring as part of their COVID-19 triage protocols, Spry Health will host a clinician webinar with more information on March 26th at 9 a.m. Pacific Time.
“How to Implement a Remote Monitoring Program to Risk Stratify At-Risk COVID-19 Patients”
To register, visit: bit.ly/2IXocQD
About the Loop System
The Loop System, a medical-grade wearable combined with AI-powered clinical analytics, is the first end-to-end solution to enable improved remote care for high-risk patients. By continuously collecting pulse oximetry, respiration rate, and heart rate, the Loop System delivers actionable insights to healthcare teams to avoid hospital admissions and reduce healthcare costs. The Loop System received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance in early 2019.
About Spry Health
Spry Health, incubated at Stanford-affiliated accelerator StartX, develops digital health solutions to transform how chronically-ill patients are treated, improve patient outcomes, and dramatically reduce healthcare costs. Founded in 2014 with a vision to transform health solutions, the company creates a new channel of information from high-risk patients through wearable technology. Spry Health provides health care organizations with analytics to allow for better care of their patients, decrease hospital admissions, and reduce unnecessary spending. For more information visit www.SpryHealth.com.
According to the interim guidance issued by the World Health Organization on March 13, 2020, the most common diagnosis in severe COVID-19 patients is severe pneumonia with symptoms of “fever or suspected respiratory infection plus one of the following: respiratory rate > 30 bpm; severe respiratory distress; or SpO2 < 93% on room air.”
